Parents have good reason to be concerned about online games, from predators to surprise credit card charges, but a game developer who got his start in Kelowna has a project aimed at fixing that.

Rémi Couture started out as an illustrator for Club Penguin in Kelowna and he recently released an early access version of his solo project Sloth Jam. It’s a free game for kids with an emphasis on safety features like limiting chat options, no add-on purchases and protections to prevent strangers from playing with kids.

“There’s a lot of peace of mind for parents and safety in that sense,” he said.

Sloth Jam is a collection of mini-games that players join through an explorable island where they roam and explore as sloths with cool hats. It’s similar to Club Penguin but with a different aim.

Couture said he designed it with simplicity and safety as his top priorities because other games made for kids have been known to have some serious issues.

Popular games and spin-off versions of Club Penguin have created situations where kids take a credit card and use it to buy in-game items without realizing how much they’re spending.

“You see horror stories of kids spending thousands of dollars on Roblox, and the parents wondering, ‘oh, what happened, what’s going on, right?’ That does not happen in this game at all,” Couture said.

Worse than the money issue is the fact that predators have used Roblox to talk to minors.

The in-game chat for Sloth Jam is restricted to a few friendly pre-set phrases and joining someone’s game to play with them requires a picture code via email.

The restrictions on chatting with other players and security measures might seem extreme, but Couture said they’re necessary because people have found ways to get around safety features in other games.

“When you have all the safety features that you think are working, and then they still are able to bypass them somehow,” he said.

Couture got his start in the gaming industry at Club Penguin in customer service in 2006. But he put his art degree to work on the side by drawing pictures which got the attention of his bosses.

“I would just draw a lot, and then a lot of people on my team would put my art on all the desktop computers and the monitors as wallpapers. That’s how everybody started noticing, like, ‘oh, where is this art coming from?’ Then I immediately moved to the art department,” he said.

Now, 20 years later, he’s still making games with a passion, but he’s looked around the industry and seen the issues with kids games on the player side as well as the developer side. One of those issues is Artificial Intelligence.

He’s no longer in Kelowna, he’s moved around the country pursuing opportunities. Those opportunities are shrinking more and more because of AI.

“I lost a lot of my own clients and my own job opportunities because of AI,” he said. “I decided to use it to my advantage. . . I think it’d be foolish not to at this point, because the industry is changing so much.”

As an independent and contract developer he’s using AI to stay competitive, but he prefers it when clients and projects give him the time and space to create things without its help.

“A lot of big studios are currently using it now. So there’s just no way around it. But I’m just one guy doing his best in surviving in this AI world,” he said. “I’m passionate about the craft. It’s fun to sit down, solve problems, and create and draw and design without leveraging AI at all.”

If people want to support Sloth Jam they can donate through the game by getting a Founders Pack, but Couture’s hope is that the game grows so families have a safe, free gaming option.

“I need people to play the game, download it, give feedback, share it and help me grow it,” he said.